


poinsettia

by isuilde



Category: Free!
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, Fluff, Free! ES episode 6 spoiler, M/M, Marriage, Unrepentant Fluff, knights AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-19
Updated: 2018-04-19
Packaged: 2019-04-25 00:25:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14366949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isuilde/pseuds/isuilde
Summary: Poinsettia’s flower language: “My heart is burning”, “holy wish”, “blessing”.Three drabbles for each meaning of poinsettia.





	1. my heart is burning

**Author's Note:**

> Two of these drabbles were originally written and posted over on my twitter, @isuilde, last year around Christmas when I bought a pot of poinsettia to celebrate MakoRinmas. Turning poinsettia’s flower language into MakoRin drabbles was a challenge I gave myself and tonight I decided to actually finish it as I had nothing to do in the train home and I miss MakoRin so much.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A take on the “Maybe I’m jealous of Rin” line in Free! ES.

“What are you going to do after graduation?”

The same question. Over and over, and Makoto knows that familiar tone of worry underlining his words. Beneath the sounds of early spring showers, in-between Haruka’s non-committal-sounding sighs and Nagisa’s cheerful bickerings with Rei, above the crunch of the pebbles under their soles as they all walk out of the Iwatobi SC.

He’d thought that tone was directed at Haruka, at first. Until one night he hears it too—the worry lying thick in the same question, in a phone call late enough to make him whisper so as to not accidentally wake up his siblings in the next room.

“Makoto,” in a murmur so quiet it could be a breath, Rin asks, “What are you going to do after graduation?”

Makoto hears, _will you still be swimming, will you still be running on the same path as me, will you be looking at the same dream—_

He remembers Haruka gliding in the water, the seamless form that makes the water parts itself and makes way for him from fingertips to toes. He remembers Rin effortlessly slicing through the water, all power and determination as the water gives in to him, pushing him forward instead of turning into a wall that blocks him. He remembers the two of them racing, remembers holding his breath as he watched them dive and surface and push through, remembers the jolt that makes his heart skip as they turn in the water and slice back towards home.

The speed, the power. The _grace_. Things he has, too, but never enough. Never enough for the dream Rin wants them to see, for the dream Makoto _wishes_ he has the courage to see and for Haruka to find.

So he answers with a soft chuckle and a whispered, “I wonder,” and when he tries to imagine himself on the starting blocks under the gaze of the world, all he sees is Haruka and Rin’s backs.

He thinks, _I need to swim against Haru_ , and he does.

He loses.

He feels Haruka’s worried, questioning gaze, feels Rin’s eyes following him with a silent why did you swim like that. Makoto smiles, goes to watch their race in turn, and is blindsided by how much Haruka and Rin _shine_.

The speed, the power. The grace. The _possibilities_. His friends, like the stars that they are, burns bright and sets Makoto’s heart aflame.

He wants to reach out. Wants to be on the line by Haruka’s side, wants to be in the water with them, wants to see Rin’s exhilarating grins amongst the splash of water. Wants to be like Rin—powerful enough to force the water to submit, to keep up with Haruka’s speed and grace, to keep running forward and pull everyone up and along, igniting the embers of fire in the hearts of everyone who sees him. Wants the fire in him satisfied because he isn’t being left behind.

 _This is not my path_ , Makoto thinks wistfully, even as his chest burns.

“I wonder why,” he answers Nagisa softly. “Maybe I was jealous of Rin.”

**—-o0o——**


	2. holy wish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crown Prince Haruka marries off his Royal Knights.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drabble? What drabble? /shot
> 
> Three years ago I wrote a fantasy knIghts!AU of Royal Knights!Makoto and Rin saving Prince Haruka from the dragon. You don’t have to read that fic first, but this one is set in the same verse. In case you want to waste your time reading it, here it is.

Rin should have known that Haruka’s absent-minded comment about how his two personal knights need to get married is an actual warning.

Instead, he had responded with a bark of laughter—half-incredulous, half-amused—and Haruka had turned inquisitive blue eyes his way, face carefully blank, and asked, “What, don’t you want to?”

Rin answered with a self-deprecating snort. “You want _Makoto_ to get married to me?”

“...do you want to get married to someone else?”

“What? No!” Rin blurted out, eyebrows creasing in incredulity. “Why would I marry anyone beside Makoto? He’s the one I’m dating—“ he stopped short, because Haruka had this knowing look that tugged the corners of his lips slight downwards, and really, at this point, Rin knew better than trying to defend himself. He sighed, ran a hand through his hair, and grumbled, “It’s not that I don’t want to marry him, it’s just—“

He took a few moments to try to arrange the words in his head, to put the emotions into something tangible, and he already wanted to cringe because good god, this would sound so embarrassing. “Marriage isn’t just about promising to spend your life together,” he said, turning away to stare instead at the sky bluer than the water Haruka is half-submerged in. “It’s literally the holiest ceremony in our kingdom, after the annual Iwasame Blessing Festival. Even more so when those participating are of either the royal family or the royal knights. It’s about promises, yeah, but it’s also tying yourself to a wish made by your partner. With holy magic. It’s not something to be taken lightly.”

Haruka stares at him like he had not been listening at all. “Do you not want to get married?”

“Sometimes you have such a one-track mind,” Rin told him, miffed. “And it’s not that—I just. I don’t want to selfishly tie Makoto to my wish and bind him to try fulfilling that for the rest of his life.”

“You’ll be doing the same though,” Haruka pointed out. “It’s equal exchange of wishes.”

“Makoto’s wishes are never selfish, Haru, you know that,” Rin shot back, and Haruka peered up at him with _such_ a knowing look that Rin narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “What?”

“You’ve always been an idiot when it comes to this kind of thing,” Haruka said, and in the face of Rin’s fuming look, he had simply, pointedly, slowly sank back into the water until its surface hovered under the tip of his nose.

**——-o0o——-**

He really should have considered that a warning, because now he is looking up at the throne, where the Haruka is presenting his first, coming-of-age decree, voice steady and words flowing like water from his lips, and when he finishes, the entire room is silent.

The King opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again, and says eloquently, “Um.”

Rin’s head whips to turn to Makoto beside him, so fast that he needs a second to refocus his sight at Makoto’s figure. Makoto’s gaze meets his, as wide and as bewildered as he is, slowly shaking his head cluelessly.

The King is clearing his throat. “Your first, coming-of-age decree is for your two royal knights to... get married.”

Haruka meets his father’s eyes steadily.

The Queen’s eyes dart quickly behind Haruka, where Rin and Makoto are kneeling almost stiffly. “You know you can’t withdraw a coming-of-age decree, right? Are you sure you want to—“

“One month should be enough for preparation,” Haruka says. “Makoto doesn’t want any huge celebration.”

Rin looks at Makoto, hisses, “You knew?!”

“I didn’t!” Makoto half-flails, his kneeling posture already half-ruined. “We were talking about what-ifs, I didn’t know Haru was going to—“

Haruka glances back slightly at his two royal knights. “Well, maybe two months. In case Rin needs a whole month to take everything in.”

 _Fuck you,_ Rin mouths at him, gets a twitch of an amused smile from Haruka, and just like that, their marriage is decided.

**——-o0o——-**

Rin spends approximately three weeks of the marriage preparation month worrying about the wish he’s going to make at the ceremony.

It has to be worded carefully, so he’s been going to the royal library to enlist the High Scholar Rei, dragging along Gou’s royal knight Sousuke to balance out Rei’s tendency to use overly grand words, though it turns out those grand phrases just amuse Sousuke so much that in the end he isn’t much help on that department. He borrows Nitori’s collections of poetry and song books, even if most of them turn out to have explicit erotic contents and he ends up not using any of them anyways. Gou says he’s being overly concerned about the whole thing, and all Rin could think of is how Makoto’s wish will probably be something so selfless like Rin’s eternal happiness, and he can’t squash the need of countering that to Makoto’s benefit.

He just doesn’t want Makoto to think that being married to Rin is a chore because Rin’s wish is ridiculously self-centered or hard to fullfil, is all.

But when the day of their marriage ceremony comes with Nagisa’s cheerful alchemy-made fireworks whistling up the bluest Undine month, painting it in sparks of red-gold-orange while the High Priestess Amakata descend down the stairs of the Holy Iwasame Shrine and Makoto is standing next to him in his true knight attire, Rin completely forgets about that. He doesn’t remember the poetically romantic, grand words that Rei and Sousuke had helped him craft, nor the questionable implications in the phrases he’d learned from Nitori’s collections.

What he notices is this: the nervous twitch in Makoto’s smile that oddly contrasts the eagerness in his eyes, the tremble of Makoto’s fingers when they join hands as Haruka sprinkles them with holy water as a gesture of royal blessing, the shade of red that sweeps over Makoto’s cheeks as their mothers come up to place a kiss on each of their foreheads as a gesture of letting go.

Then High Priestess Amakata intones, in that hauntingly soft voice of hers: “You may now give form to your wishes through words, and under the guidance of Iwasame-sama, know that your partner’s wish is as holy as your own, as this union shall tie you in fulfilling them in the course of your life.”

Rin tenses noticeably. He looks up to Makoto, who catches his eyes and squeezes his hand, gaze softening as he turns to Rin properly. He opens his mouth, and Rin finds himself holding his breath.

“I—“ Makoto starts, pauses because his words catches on his next breath, and he looks sheepish for a moment. “I think my wish is going to sound very selfish, so I want to apologize in advance.”

Rin blinks. Looks up at him in disbelief. “Selfish? _You?_ ”

Makoto smiles.

“I wish for you to stay by my side as long as you are willing to,” he murmurs, quiet but unhesitant, and something in Rin’s chest breaks into indescribable warmth that brings tears to his eyes. “For you to let me love you, support you, as long as you are willing to. To be mine and mine only, and let me be yours and yours only, as long as you would have me.”

Rin loses his breath even before the last of Makoto’s wish left Makoto’s lips. It’s the tears that fall, the second Makoto finishes the last syllable, and he wonders what exactly being selfish means, for him and for Makoto and perhaps for Haruka, as well, because he had been the one who pushed both of them enough to go through with this marriage. He wonders if years of him loving Makoto have taught Makoto to be more selfish, or if years basking in Makoto’s warmth have taught him to be more selfless than he thinks he could be.

Perhaps both. Perhaps neither is right. Perhaps all of them are selfish and selfless in their own unique ways.

Regardless, it all seems so much simple now. Rin thinks back on his desperate efforts for the past three weeks, thinks back of Sousuke’s amusement and Rei’s timely burst-outs over grand phrases of expression, wonders if they had tried too, in their own way, to not let him overstress on this. He thinks back on Haruka’s knowing look, wonders how much Haruka actually understand them more than they think, and amusedly thinks, _I am an idiot._

He knows Makoto wouldn’t agree, though, if he says it out loud.

So he doesn’t. He forgets about all the grand words and implications in phrases as beautiful as the first rays of dawn, and finds the rawest, most honest words embarrassingly knocking in his chest instead.

“I wish to make you happy,” he whispers, each syllable a vow. “Even if there would ever be a time when you no longer want me to do so.”

Later, he barely remembers High Priestess Amakata announcing them to be married. Barely remembers the cheers breaking the quiet air of the Shrine, or the Shrine attendants tying a red string around their little fingers that hangs down their wrists. He barely remembers being ushered the Shrine’s stairs to be presented to the crowds, and completely fails to notice the impressive display of the kingdom’s knights saluting to both of them as they make their way down the stairs.

What he remembers is Makoto pressing their foreheads together the second he finishes his wish, the warmth of Makoto’s hitching breath on the tip of his nose, the pretty pitter-patter of tears dropping from the corners of Makoto’s eyes. He remembers Makoto’s heartfelt _I-love-you_ , drowned by the cheers of the crowds, and the way they hold each other’s hand so tightly that Rin thinks he’s probably branded Makoto’s hand, somehow. He remembers the happy smile on Haruka’s face as they kneel before him at the end of the Shrine’s stairs, the tip of the royal sword once again gracing the top of their heads in a gesture of acceptance.

And much, much later, a far-off song telling the tale of two knights loyal to the crown prince, who love one another to the end of days.

**——-o0o——-**


	3. blessing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Makoto, Rin, and New Year’s omikuji.

“Huh,” Rin says, a tiny frown marring his face as he tilts his head, looking down at the piece of paper in his hand. The top of it has two characters printed in black— _shoukichi_ —and something within him falls a little.

Small blessings.

“Oh,” Makoto says, his weight settling against Rin’s side almost too-naturally. Fingers pull Rin’s bangs back as Makoto leans in to take a closer look, the white puff of his breath dancing on the corner of Rin’s vision, joining his own. He doesn’t say anything else, and they both bask in each other’s warmth for a moment.

There’s the sound of rustling as Makoto shoves a hand into his coat pocket, pulling out a similar piece of paper, folded into fourth. The dim lights of the lanterns overhead dyes it a shade of old-yellow—Rin doesn’t stop himself from reaching out, brushes his fingers against the tips of Makoto’s fingers, pale but bitten red by the cold, a stark contrast against his own black gloved-fingers.

Makoto pauses. Smiles. And guides Rin’s fingers to open the folded paper.

“Huh,” Rin says, because it says ‘ _Daikichi_ ’.

The white puff of Makoto’s breath dances in the air to the tune of his light chuckle. “I think,” he says, and the words are warm over Rin’s cheek, “we should trade.”

Rin bumps the side of his head gently against Makoto’s, almost upsetting the fuzzy earmuffs protecting Makoto’s ears from the bite of a late winter night. “That’s not how omikuji works.”

“But Rin,” he likes that lilt that Makoto makes, likes how it wraps around the syllables of his name just so, like Steve’s bushy tail sneaking in between his feet—the briefest brush of a tickling sensation in his chest that makes his cheeks heat. “You’re going to need it more than I do this year.”

Bare fingers gently snatches the omikuji paper away from Rin, and then Makoto’s warmth dances away with a happy laugh. Rin stares at the omikuji left in his hand—Great Blessings—and thinks about how silly it is that he already misses the comfortable weight and the warmth and the white puff of air that curls around his name—

Bare fingers hook themselves around his own gloved ones, tugging gently, almost shyly. Rin looks up and catches Makoto’s gaze, his eyes a shade darker under the lanterns lights, warmer than the heat pack currently pressing against his back. In the distance, the first rings of Joya no Kane sounds, echoing into the embrace of New Year’s Eve, and in-between them, Momotarou and Nagisa’s excited chatter continues.

“Let’s head back to the others,” Rin says, and Makoto smiles that much wider.

Rin isn’t one to count his blessings, really, but if he’s going to have a lot of blessings this year, then this, he thinks, as he refolds the omikuji paper one-handed and curls the other hand firmly around Makoto’s own, would be one of them.

**——-o0o——-**

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to yell at me about MakoRin over on twitter! I’m @isuilde there, I’ll always be ecstatic to shriek over these two ww


End file.
